I think active monitoring of social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook is becoming a business operations requirement. Proactive monitoring will help ensure potentially damaging user generated content is identified early enough to implement a damage control strategy. Should the content be inaccurate and/or slanderous, the firm should actively publicize (through social media and potentially elsewhere) their defense. If the content is factual, as it was with the United Breaks Guitars case, the firm can utilize social media to express their plan of action to address the issues at hand. The rapid information spreading capabilities of social media can ultimately help the firm to assuage customer concerns.
Firms can also leverage social media sites to improve their service to customers. As United planned in the United Breaks Guitars case, content and feedback from social media can be used to educate employees and even aid in training programs. Firms could actually extend the use of social media even farther by enlisting social media sites as another form of customer support. For instance, firms could add their facebook page as another form of customer support input (in addition to home page, in person and phone support).
Agreed - but companies have to draw the line somewhere with actively monitoring and investigating claims. The problem with social media (which is also the beaty of it) is that it's unfiltered/uncensored so these companies have to weed through a ton of information that may or may not be true.
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